Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, November 21, 2016

11/21 Links Pt1: Netanyahu: Abbas Is Not Preparing Palestinians for Reconciliation with Israel; France postpones Mideast peace summit

From Ian:

Netanyahu: Abbas Is Not Preparing Palestinians for Reconciliation with Israel

Yesterday was the 39th anniversary of President Anwar Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem. A peace agreement was achieved between Israel and Egypt through direct negotiations; this agreement has stood for almost 40 years, currently under the courageous leadership of Egyptian President al-Sisi. I note this because here one can see the contrast with what is occurring vis-à-vis the Palestinians.
Abu Mazen refuses to come to direct negotiations without preconditions, is also continuing to incite his people regarding the idea of a right of return and erasing the State of Israel, and, to my regret, is not taking the right steps to start calming things and preparing public opinion for reconciliation with the State of Israel, which we see among certain Arab countries, the buds of a start here, and I hope this will change.

Required Changes in PA text books, used in US funded UNRWA schools.

As President-elect Donald Trump launches his transition team, he will undoubtedly take a good look at US Middle East Policy. The new President will have to cope with the fact that the US government pays for one third of the 1.2 billion dollar budget for UNRWA, an agency which administers the refugee status of five million Palestinian Arabs…refugees for perpetuity.
Even worse, the US Funded UNRWA school system has adopted the Palestinian Authority war education curriculum, which indoctrinates their students to take up arms for the "right of return" to villages which their grandparents left in 1948.
Since the motto of UNRWA is: "PEACE STARTS HERE", the new Trump administration may now wish to finally introduce a peace curriculum into UNRWA schools. Here is how President Trump can accomplish that goal.
Stop De-legitimization of the State of Israel and of the Jewish Presence in the Country

Every map that shows today's political boundaries in the region should mark Israel's pre-1967 territory by the name "Israel". Such a territory must not be left un-named and certainly should not be named "Palestine", as that constitutes a distortion of the present situation on the ground.

Israel should be presented as an ordinary sovereign state in every text mentioning the region's states currently.

Every reference to a region, settlement or site within Israel's pre-1967 armistice lines must not describe such a region, settlement or site as exclusively Palestinian.

Every discussion within the books of the holy places in the country should refer to the Jewish holy places alongside the Muslim and Christian ones. Any reference to a place which happens to be sacred to Jews (such as the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem) should state that fact.

Infighting Clouds Palestinian Authority's Future

With the long-ruling Palestinian Fatah faction torn by rivalries, fierce shootouts between Palestinian security forces and Fatah-aligned gunmen have erupted in recent months, plunging the Balata camp into unrest and lawlessness.
The violence, much of it directed at a Fatah leadership seen as corrupt and out of touch, comes as the movement prepares to hold an overdue leadership conference at the end of the month and reflects a combustible power struggle between the faction's aging leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, and exiled rival Mohammed Dahlan, a former top aide who has the backing of some gunmen and disaffected Fatah activists.
"I no longer want to fight Israel. I'm not willing to die for these officials who are only taking care of their families and letting us suffer," said Abu Riziq, 30, who spent nearly seven years in an Israeli prison for assisting in a suicide bombing.
The violence has left about a dozen people dead this year. Observers warn it could spiral out of control the longer that Fatah remains divided.
Abbas, 82, is pushing for leadership elections in his Fatah movement and the Palestine Liberation Organization, an umbrella movement dominated by Fatah, before the end of the year, as part of what officials say is largely an elaborate attempt to cement his power and block Dahlan's return.
Abbas has no plans to step down or designate a successor, despite a recent health scare in which doctors ordered an unscheduled heart exam prompted by complaints of fatigue. Those elected to top Fatah and PLO posts could form a pool of potential successors, though none would likely challenge Abbas as long as he is in office.

Ma'an reports:

Hundreds of employees of UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for providing services for some five million Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, went on strike on Monday in the organization's main offices in Gaza City, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, protesting the UNRWA adminstration's failure to meet their demands regarding wages and unfilled job vacancies.

Head of the employee's union Suheil al-Hindi told Ma’an that about 1,000 employees who work in the main headquarters in Gaza City went on strike Monday, adding that the "biggest protest" would take place on Tuesday as local employees in all UNRWA's office in the northern Gaza Strip would go on strike and would take to the streets.

Talks between the union and the UNRWA's administration have been frozen, he noted, and more protests would come if the demands of the union were not met.

Hundreds of UNRWA employees launched a one-day strike and protested last week in front of the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City over the same unmet demands.

Al-Hindi has previously accused the UNRWA administration in the past of not filling in hundreds of vacant positions, claiming the UN agency "deliberately puts off hiring employees in order to win some time and save money at the expense of refugees."

The union, according to al-Hindi, has also demanded that UNRWA increase salaries to reflect the high cost of living and to stop reducing services the organization offers to Palestinian refugees.

UNRWA's director of operations in the Gaza Strip, Bo Schack denied on Oct. 17 that UNRWA had reduced any services to Palestinian refugees despite the severe funding shortage.

"UNRWA is exerting huge efforts in Gaza and there have been no reductions in services at all," Schack said during a news conference at UNRWA's headquarters in Gaza City, when he claimed that the total number of UNRWA employees had in fact increased.

If you follow the Twitter accounts of spokesperson Chris Gunness, the aforementioned Bo Schack, UNRWA head Pierre Krahenbuhl, UNRWA-USA and even UNRWA itself, you would have no idea that UNRWA employees have been striking on and off for two weeks.

This is the "transparency" that UNRWA shows the world that has given it billions of dollars.

The bigger issue, of course, is that UNRWA cannot possibly continue to get funding indefinitely as long as its definition of refugees ensures that the number of people it supports will forever grow with no possibility for those refugees to become non-refugees, even when they become citizens of other countries. UNRWA was intended to be a temporary agency that would exist only until refugees found a permanent home, but Arab refusal to make them citizens coupled with UNRWA's acquiescence to Arab demands to use the refugees as anti-Israel pawns has turned the agency into a huge waste of money with generations of Arabs who feel entitled to free services for their own descendants, forever.

In fact, that is the reason UNRWA doesn't want to talk about the strikes or other protests that erupt regularly from the people that get free aid and jobs from the agency. If anyone looks too closely, they see that the agency cannot survive without their annual begging for "emergency "funds. Something is going to break, but rather than address the problem, UNRWA wants to keep sweeping it under the rug for as long as it can keep raking in the cash.

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How Nasser answered Deborah Rabinowitz' letter asking him not to attack Israel

In the spring of 1956, a Jewish girl named Deborah Rabinowitz from Queens saw a TV show about how poor Arabs are. Touched by their plight, she sent $2 to to Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser that she saved to buy her sister a Passover present, along with this letter:

Dear Mr. Nasser,

I saw on T.V. how poor the Arab children were and so I am sending you two dollars of my Passover money that I had saved to buy my little sister a Passover present. Please buy some clothes for the Arab children.

Please don't have a war with Israel because the children might get hurt. I promise I will send more money.

Your American friend,

Deborah Rabinowitz

age 8 1/2

Nasser responded:

Cairo 23.6.1956

Dear Deborah Rabinowitz,

This is to acknowledge with the utmost gratitude the receipt of your 2 dollars donation to refugee children dissipated by Israel, and to commend your really noble feeling.

I should like you to believe that Egypt has no aggressive intentions whatsoever; our mission is one of Peace and participation in any effort directed to the good of Humanity and the Peace of the Entire World.

Yours sincerely,
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Prime Minister of Egypt

That letter was dated June 23, 1956.

Three days later, on June 26, Nasser seized control of the Suez Canal and blocked all Israeli ships from using it, lighting the spark that led to the 1956 war.

Perhaps this Arab leader wasn't entirely trustworthy.

Note that Deborah's letter didn't specify the poor Arabs she was referring to, it is not so clear that the TV report was about refugees from the 1948 war, as Nasser responded. So even Nasser's letter to an eight year old Jewish girl included anti-Israel propaganda.

Egypt had banned all refugees from living in its borders and shunted them all to Gaza, making it a true open-air prison. It used Gaza as a staging area for fedayeen attacks against Israel throughout the 1950s. That $2 did not help anyone but Nasser.

Notice also that Nasser didn't refer to those refugees as "Palestinians."

Hopefully Deborah Rabinowitz grew out of the mentality that antisemitic and anti-Israel leaders would turn peaceful if only we send them more money and tell them how sympathetic we are. Today, too many Westerners, including too many American Jews still think with the exact same logic and naivete of an 8 1/2-year old girl.

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Usually we have to use MEMRI to find out what antisemitic Muslim clerics are saying. Here, we can hear it in plain English:

From Shalom.Kiwi:

A shocking video has surfaced containing excerpts of a number of Auckland sermons and lectures given by Shaykh Dr Mohammad Anwar Sahib between April 2014 and November 2016 in which he repeatedly uses appalling anti-Semitic slanders and libels and denigrates women. In one sermon, he calmly calls Jews “the enemy of Muslims” and claims that:

Jews are using everybody because their protocol is to rule the entire world”Shaykh Dr Mohammad Anwar Sahib

Of more concern is that Dr Sahib is the President of the At Taqwa Mosque in Manukau, Auckland (where the comments were made, and from where they were broadcast on YouTube) and is also (according to FIANZ and his CV) secretary of the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand (FIANZ) Ulama Council and FIANZ Advisory Board. The FIANZ Ulama Council is responsible for religious affairs in the New Zealand Muslim community, including family counselling and dispute resolution. Dr Sahib also claims to be an adviser to the New Zealand government on Halal issues.

Like his views on Jews, Dr Sahib also shares views on women’s rights that are out of step with New Zealand values. In one sermon, he proclaims that:

No woman can dare step out of her house without the permission of her husband” Shaykh Dr Mohammad Anwar Sahib

The New Zealand Human Rights Commission issued a statement after being contacted by Shalom.Kiwi site about this:

The Human Rights Commission says an Auckland man’s speeches condemning Jewish people are appalling and have no place in New Zealand.

“We live in one of the most ethnically diverse nations on earth as well as one of the most peaceful: this is because we are a tolerant nation,” said Race Relations Commissioner Dame Susan Devoy.

“This kind of intolerance is not welcome here in any form: Prejudice against Jewish people has no place in New Zealand.” Videos of speeches delivered by Shaykh Dr Mohammad Anwar Sahib at the Manukau mosque have been widely viewed online.

“We urge Kiwis to recognise that these are the views of a single person and are not held by every single Muslim New Zealander, however questions need to be answered,” said Dame Susan.

“We’ve been in touch with the leaders of the NZ Jewish Council as well as the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand (FIANZ), both of whom are deeply concerned about the speeches. We have asked for an urgent response from FIANZ.”

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EoZTV: Trump's Picks

Are Trump's picks as racist as the media makes them out to be? This special videocast of EoZTV looks at what we know so far, as objectively as we could be.

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Erekat compares Israel to ISIS

At the Doha World Policy Forum, today, Saeb Erekat was up to his usual lies, pretending that the Palestinians don't treat this like a religious conflict and that Jews are just like ISIS.

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11/20 Links: PA Ambassador Admits UNESCO Resolution Was To Claim Temple Mount Is Muslim Only; Ruthie Blum: Alt-left delete

From Ian:

IsraellyCool: Palestinian Ambassador Admits UNESCO Resolution Was To Affirm Temple Mount Is Muslim Only

First, Ambassador Ajran explicitly laid out the reasons for the Palestinian and Arab-led vote at UNESCO last month. Most Western countries ended up supporting or abstaining from the vote by highlighting the late addition of a line reaffirming the ‘importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its walls for the three monotheistic faiths, Islam, Christianity and Judaism.’ There were many who said Israel overreacted to the resolution saying that just because it didn’t mention the Hebrew names for the Temple Mount and Western Wall, it doesn’t mean it is sought to deny the Jewish connection to them.
But that is exactly what the Ambassador says was the motivation behind the resolution!
“Kuwait… sponsored and recognized fully that the Palestinian issue is a Kuwaiti issue carried by Kuwaiti officials to all international forums, most recently Palestine’s victory at UNESCO and the issuance of the historic decision that the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Buraq wall, and underneath it and around it is a right for Muslims only and not others.”
But the Ambassador’s speech was also remarkable for another reason. Not for what he said, but for what he didn’t say. Most people have forgotten that in 1991, towards the end of the First Gulf War and after, Kuwait expelled over 400,000 Palestinians. If you have never heard of this, you aren’t alone. You won’t heard about this massive ethnic cleansing at any pro-Palestinian event. No organizers Israel Apartheid Week will mention this mass expulsion. And of course, there were no protests in the Western or Arab worlds nor any UN resolutions condemning the Kuwaiti government for its carefully planned and well documented actions. In fact, Kuwaiti diplomat Sheikh Saud Nasser al-Sabah told the Washington Post that
“thousands [of Palestinians] who do not have jobs will be deported or their permits will not be renewed. … And I think we have a perfect right to demand” it, he said. “It’s not just us in the government demanding it, it’s the people in the street who are demanding it.” … Having a large number of Palestinians in Kuwait would not be “helpful to our security,”

Portuguese restaurant vandalized over chef’s visit to Israel

Anti-Israel activists vandalized a restaurant in Portugal because its head chef participated in a food festival in Israel.
The perpetrators, who are believed to be activists for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, on Friday night spilled red paint on the facade of the Cantinho do Avillez restaurant in the northern city of Porto and posted signs on it reading: “Free Palestine,” “Avillez collaborates with Zionist occupation” and “Entrée: A dose of white phosphorus.”
The attack, which is rare in Portugal, followed picketing opposite the restaurant by BDS activists over the participation of chef Jose Avillez along with at least 11 other chefs from renowned dining establishments around the world in the Round Tables festival in Tel Aviv this month, which is sponsored by American Express.
Robert Singer, CEO of the World Jewish Congress, condemned the BDS movement for the attack, which he said was anti-Semitic.

Take action! Demand that UNRWA remove inciting material from their classrooms.

The poster on the left represents a bit of anti-Zionist propaganda that has been around for decades and is among the negative images of Jewish self-determination that today's college kids grew up with.

Although the western progressive-left generally supports anti-Zionism, American Jews still cling to the Democratic Party despite the fact that the party and the movement believes it has every right to tell Jewish people where we may, or may not, be allowed to live within our own homeland.

About 80 percent of American Jews, including me, voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and about 70 percent, not including me, did so in 2012. In the current cycle, American Jews voted for Hillary Clinton in similar numbers.

Given the fact that the western progressive-left has made a home of itself for malicious anti-Semitic anti-Zionists it becomes rather difficult to understand why American Jews continue to support a political movement, and its adjacent political party, that hold them in contempt.

The Washington Post has a piece from last September entitled, In the safe spaces on campus, no Jews allowed by Anthony Berteaux. Berteaux relates the story of Arielle Mokhtarzadeh, an Iranian-Jew who was made to feel unwelcome by the UCLA progressive community due to her caring for the Jewish people through caring for the Jewish State of Israel. As a student of Jewish-Persian background she therefore attended the annual Students of Color Conference in search of answers.

Mokhtarzadeh tells us:

Over the course of what was probably no longer than an hour, my history was denied, the murder of my people was justified, and a movement whose sole purpose is the destruction of the Jewish homeland was glorified. Statements were made justifying the ruthless murder of innocent Israeli civilians, blatantly denying Jewish indigeneity in the land, and denying the Holocaust in which six million Jews were murdered,” she said. “Why anyone in their right mind would accept these slanders as truths baffles me. But they did. These statements, and others, were met with endless snaps and cheers. I was taken aback.

The truth is that many Democrats despise the lone, sole Jewish state as a human rights monstrosity even though it has a far better record on human rights than any other country throughout the Middle East. This little fact, in itself, reveals the anti-Jewish racism within BDS and, therefore, embedded within the Democratic Party.

It is for this reason that progressives often support Hamas and the Palestinian Authority when they call for the murder of Jews in the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. Every time Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) or the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) meet on some campus to call for yet another intifada they are, in fact, calling for the murder of innocent Jews in Israel.

Such calls for anti-Jewish violence tend to be supported not only by other progressive-left students, but also by sympathetic university administrators who could hardly care less that students are calling for violence against Jews on their very own campuses. They even provide thumb-sucking "safe-spaces" where those very same students can rest their heads on university provided pillows without having to deal with the richly deserved ramifications of their own behavior. Since no one is allowed to even question their judgment in these "safe spaces" they need not even consider the possibility that calling for violence against Jewish people - as a matter of social justice, no less - might actually be something other than liberal.

In fact, San Francisco State University president, Leslie Wong, is so enamored of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism that he even praised GUPS as representing "the very purpose of this great university." He did so despite the fact that, in their cries for intifada, they literally call for the murder of Jews in Israel. Sometimes they even call for bringing the intifada home, by which they mean support for the political murder of Jews in the United States. None of this fazes the progressive-left because offing Jews - particularly of the Israeli variety - is considered a rational and perfectly normal human response to alleged Jewish aggression against the bunny-like "indigenous" population in the Land of Israel.

And this is why Arielle Mokhtarzadeh was treated like filth at UCLA.

Berteaux writes:

The ramifications of ignoring the normalization of anti-Semitism cannot be understated: The most recent FBI hate crime report found that 58.2 percent of hate crimes motivated by religious bias were targeted at Jews. Jews make up 2.2 percent of the American population, so the FBI’s statistics make it clear that Jews are the most disproportionately attacked religious group in America. It should be troubling to everyone that an SJP member at Temple University physically assaulted a pro-Israel Jewish student two years ago, calling him a “Zionist baby killer.” But it should be far more troubling that the SJP chapter at Temple (like all SJP chapters) promotes itself as a progressive organization, claiming solidarity with movements such as Black Lives Matter.

The Democratic Party just got its ass kicked by a crude businessman-entertainer who they accuse of being everything short of the Devil and now they are not only screaming from the rafters about racism and white supremacy, but they even have the chutzpah to suddenly start whining about the alleged anti-Semitism of conservatives and Republicans.

The truth is that the Left and the Democratic Party are enemies of the Jewish people to the extent that they make a homes of themselves for anti-Semitic anti-Zionism. American Jews are, essentially, being told that they may contribute to the progressive movement but the price of admission is sitting across the Democratic Party table from anti-Zionists who have no respect for our history, no respect for the Holocaust, and who think that we are undeserving of self-determination and self-defense within our own homeland.

Requiring that Jews accept anti-Semitic anti-Zionism as part of the larger Democratic Party coalition is no different from asking black people to kindly accept Klansmen as part of that coalition. No self-respecting black person would ever do so and neither should any self-respecting Jew.

The progressive-left and the Democratic Party fling around charges of racism like they're confetti. Throughout the recent American presidential campaign they lambasted Trump and his supporters as Neanderthal fascists representing the very worst of all humanity, which is why some of their devotees are beating the hell out of white people in the streets. But if the Democratic Party has suddenly rediscovered anti-Semitism it is strictly out of political convenience, nothing more.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

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Last Sunday, I reported that Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the banned northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel and who has incited violence against Jews for years, announced a hunger strike to protest the conditions of his imprisonment.

The hunger strike was over by Thursday, with no indication that it accomplished anything.

Mohammed Barakeh, head of the Arab Monitoring Committee, announced the end of the hunger strike "because his message got across."

It sounds like Salah just got hungry.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Islamic authority, criticizing "Muezzin law," claims Muslim tolerance for Jewish prayer. Really.

The General Authority for Supreme Islamic Authority in Jerusalem complained about the proposed law to ban loudspeaker-fueled calls to prayer, saying that if anyone doesn't like the ear-splitting pre-dawn noise, "they should go home."

In a press release, the Islamic Authority claimed that the innovation of using huge loudspeakers instead of the traditional role of the muezzin to call for prayer from a minaret is part of Islamic law and an "act of worship, " and no one can interfere with it because that would violate freedom of worship.

The statement went on to say that "the great Islamic religion does not interfere with worship and ritual of other heavenly religions (Judaism and Christianity,) but it preserves and respects them, quoting the Quran, "There is no compulsion in religion."

This last part is particularly ironic since Muslim leaders are livid at the thought of Jews worshipping on the Temple Mount. The Muslim media complains every time Jews visit the Tomb of Joseph to pray there. Jews who visit the Cave of the Patriarchs are regularly denounced and have been shot at, as have Jews who visit Rachel's Tomb for prayer and to recite Psalms. The ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives is under constant attack from Arab vandals. 50 synagogues in Jerusalem were methodically destroyed in 1948, and Jews were disallowed from visiting the Western Wall and every other holy site while it was under Jordanian rule.

But besides that and many other examples of Muslim intolerance of Jewish prayer and rituals within the borders of what they call "historic Palestine," yeah, sure they are really tolerant.

Gaza synagogue after it was destroyed in an act of religious tolerance

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Fox News should sue Fatah

Check out the logo at Fateh News, a Cairo-based news outlet for news from Fatah's perspective:

Does it look familiar?

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11/19 Links: Islamic Terrorists not Poor and Illiterate, but Rich and Educated; Jerusalem welcomes Trump’s ‘pro-Israel’ security picks

From Ian:

Islamic Terrorists not Poor and Illiterate, but Rich and Educated

"The better young people are integrated, the greater the chance is that they radicalize. This hypothesis is supported by a lot of evidence". — From a report by researchers at Erasmus University in Rotterdam.
"The proportions of [Islamic State] administrators but also of suicide fighters increase with education," according to a World Bank report. "Moreover, those offering to become suicide bombers ranked on average in the more educated group."
Britain's MI5 revealed that "two-thirds of the British suspects have a middle-class profile and those who want to become suicide bombers are often the most educated".
Researchers have discovered that "the richer the countries are the more likely will provide foreign recruits to the terrorist group [ISIS]."
The West seems to have trouble accepting that terrorists are not driven by inequality, but by hatred for Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian values of the West.
For the Nazis, the "inferior race" (the Jews) did not deserve to exist; for the Stalinists, the "enemies of the people" were not entitled to continue living; for the Islamists, it is the West itself that does not deserve to exist.
It is anti-Semitism, not poverty, that led the Palestinian Authority to name a school after Abu Daoud, mastermind of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

An Anti-Israel Brigade With Ties To Hamas Finds A Home In San Francisco State University

Opponents of academic accountability and apologists for terrorism alike are seething with fury over a campaign by the Middle East Forum (MEF) and Campus Watch to end San Francisco State University's Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which it coordinates with Hamas-dominated An-Najah University in the West Bank. Accurate criticism of a taxpayer-funded institution and extensive documentation of An-Najah’s ties to radicalism and terrorism go unanswered, while accusations of “McCarthyism,” “Islamophobia” and “hate-mongering” by “Zionists” abound.
Predictably, SFSU’s General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) rushed to defend MOU architect and faculty adviser Rabab Abdulhadi (who is also director of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative) with a cliché-ridden statement accusing Campus Watch and other “Zionist organizations” of racism, “Islamophobia,” and, most absurdly, “anti-Semitism."
The Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network released a statement claiming that Campus Watch and other “Zionist groups … target Palestinian academics in the United States . . . [and] operate hand in hand with the violent military raids and pre-dawn arrests against Palestinian student activists at An-Najah.” Translation: Jews who object to relentless defamation of Israel on campus are as guilty as dastardly Israelis, and you know what we do to dastardly Israelis, right?
The 2016 Prisoner, Labor, and Academic Delegation to Palestine - a group comprised of radical activists and academics with whom Abdulhadi traveled to An-Najah earlier this year for an MOU-facilitated conference - equated Campus Watch's campaign with “an escalating backlash by pro-Israeli, Zionist organizations to undermine support for Palestine.”
The U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), of which Abdulhadi is a founding member, accused MOU opponents of engaging in “McCarthy-like tactics.”
Abdulhadi herself resorted to the same tiresome banalities, describing Campus Watch’s effort to end the MOU as a “McCarthyist attack” and “a witch hunt campaign.” She maintained that the campaign “seeks to whip up hysteria, Islamophobia, racism and xenophobia to divert attention from Israeli criminality.”

Why all Labour members need to read parliament’s antisemitism report

It is unfortunate that both Corbyn and Chakrabarti only seem fully to understand antisemitism when it comes in the form of state sponsored genocide and verbal and physical assaults on Jewish people. Indeed, the committee remarks that it is “not persuaded that [Jeremy Corbyn] fully appreciates the distinct nature of post-Second World War antisemitism”.
It is unfortunate, too, that Chakrabarti trivialised the evidence she heard of antisemitic anti-Zionism in the Labour Party as “a series of unhappy incidents”.
Those on the anti-racist left, and indeed all those who care about race hate, must accept the the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Corbyn and his supporters must also accept, once and for all, the committee’s conclusion that antisemitism is happening in the Labour party. Only then can they resolve to stamp it out.
As left-wing journalist Owen Jones recently said: “It is incumbent on the progressively-minded to take antisemitism seriously. We wouldn’t belittle other forms of bigotry or seek to deflect from it. Discussion about serious antisemitism should not be launched into a debate about Israel.”